Devastatingly funny debut
Kiran Saggu is the first comedian to make art about wanting to tell a man on the Tube to get his dick out of her pocket. Probably.
Born in the US, to Desi-British parents, and living in the UK for the last 12 years, she has a rich seam of cultural insights across multiple nations, and observations which land with skewering accuracy. With a dead-pan but impassioned delivery, we make our way through topics as wide-ranging as immigration, colonialism, the ambition to be a nepobaby, homemade slacks, the audacity of the men she dates to think they could do stand-up; laziness in her school work almost causing a diplomatic incident at a Catholic school; vox pops in Hackney, and why she’s more like the King than we might expect.
Being determined to be the one to end the line of ‘working hard to give the next generation a better life’ and instead, enjoy the rewards that privilege affords, is a solid premise and is delivered well here. Whilst covering colonialism and immigration, we have my favourite part – a nuanced metaphor of how England is the straight white man who invites you to ‘come over if you want’ but afterwards, makes sure you definitely know your way back home (or will happily mansplain the best route for you).
We also had some smatterings of crowd work, and she did well for having a small audience in the last throes of the Fringe – even politely correcting herself for interrupting the audience. She has a warmth to her interactions, which made the interactions feel authentic and personable.
We covered a lot of ground in this hour, and some of it dealt with a light touch – I’d personally love to see more of Kiran’s delving a little deeper on some of the topics, as she is keenly perceptive. Some of the UK vs US comparisons whilst well-observed, didn’t feel quite as fresh as other areas of the show. We did see glimpses of Kiran’s voice work – she clearly has an ear for accents, so it would be interesting to see if she explores this area more in the future.
The show concludes with a glorious anecdote about the Daily Mail (bear with me here…) where Kiran went viral for screenshotting a deeply patronising rejection letter for a job application. We rifle through some of the choicer comments, where one recommending a modelling career being downvoted more than a deeply misogynistic one. The ability to turn this into a funny rather than depressing episode of being misunderstood as well as objectified is what makes this part really land.
This is an assuredly confident show and is impressive for one in her debut hour. You can’t help but think that in an evening slot, this would surely have received a lot more attention, but Kiran has to have been one of the hidden gems of the Fringe. Based on the strength of this debut, she is definitely one to follow, and has the audacity of a straight white man to see her succeed.